Destined to Die Young

The brief biographical note duplicated in each of the three booklets (these CDs were previously available separately and were recorded over several years) tell a rather sad tale of yet another famous and successful composer destined to die young, in debt, and unmourned by a hard-hearted public. That he was a close friend of none other than Mozart for twenty years of his short life draws the parallel still closer. It is too easy to see the post J.S.Bach period as one consisting of a gap followed by Haydn and Mozart. In fact the sons of Bach included several very fine musicians indeed; Johann Christian is one, with the other most significant being Carl Philipp Emanuel. These two have only to be heard to alert the listener to their importance. Sons of Bach they may have been, but clones they were not.

When first approaching The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, it's best not to think of it as a Sex Pistols album; rather, keep in mind that it's the soundtrack to a movie that was mostly about Malcolm McLaren and only tangentially concerned the great band he managed. Only eight of the twenty-four songs on The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle feature the same band as on Never Mind the Bollocks, and most of those capture them stomping through covers in the studio, sometimes to impressive effect (Johnny Rotten sounds positively feral on the Who's "Substitute" and the whole band tears into "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" with malicious glee) and sometimes not (Rotten reveals he doesn't know the words to either Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" or Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner," and the band's familiarity isn't much greater).